News from the Wire

FPC offers practical guide for building open alias directory services

Tuesday, May 13, 2025 — 17:20:10 (UTC)

Bentonville, Ark., May 13, 2025 – The U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), a membership organization devoted to advancing safe, easy-to-use faster payments in the United States, today published a new industry resource from its Directory Models Work Group: Decision Points for an Open Alias Directory. The report presents critical considerations for the development of an open, alias-based directory service that could simplify and accelerate faster payments in the United States.

The new report builds on the group’s prior foundational work on directory services, offering tangible insights into how such a system might operate in practice. It explores architectural frameworks, implementation models, and key decision points—such as the types of alias values that can be used, how alias ownership can be established, and how queries and responses should be structured. The goal is to guide industry stakeholders who may be interested in developing or contributing to such a capability.

“The Directory Models Work Group has made the case that a directory service is a valuable resource to speed adoption of faster payments in the complex U.S. payments ecosystem,” said Peter Tapling, Managing Director of PTap Advisory, LLC and FPC Directory Models Work Group Chair. “This report takes the next step to provide some material guidance to industry participants who would be inclined to develop such a capability.”

In addition to mapping out technical and operational considerations, the report examines multiple design models including redirector, forwarder, and concentrator configuration, and highlights the trade-offs of each. It emphasizes the importance of flexible architecture, clear governance, and thoughtful user experience design to ensure the success of any future implementation.

“A developer of an alias-based payments directory has many architectural decisions to make, such as what to allow for an alias, how much data to store in the directory, what information is required in a query and what is returned in response to the query,” said Lou Grilli, Vice Chair of the Directory Models Work Group. “For each of these decision points, there are no right or wrong answers, but it is important to consider the pros and cons of each.”

The considerations detailed in the report come at a time when the demand for seamless, secure faster payments experiences continues to grow. As the industry explores ways to increase interoperability and reduce friction, this resource offers a framework to support informed decision-making and future innovation.

“At the FPC, we bring stakeholders together to solve complex industry challenges,” said Reed Luhtanen, FPC Executive Director and CEO. “This report demonstrates the value of that collaboration by translating broad concepts into concrete guidance that can help turn the vision of a truly open directory into reality. By identifying the key decisions and trade-offs involved, it equips industry leaders with the insight needed to move from exploration to execution.”

The full report, Decision Points for an Open Alias Directory, is now available for download from the FPC's Faster Payments Knowledge Center.

For more information on the FPC, its current work efforts or to join, visit FasterPaymentsCouncil.org.

Contact: Elizabeth Grice U.S. Faster Payments Council 720-737-7368 egrice@fasterpaymentscouncil.org About the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC) The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose vision is a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. By design, the FPC encourages a diverse range of perspectives and is open to all stakeholders in the U.S. payment system. Guided by principles of fairness, inclusiveness, flexibility and transparency, the FPC uses collaborative, problem-solving approaches to resolve the issues that are inhibiting broad faster payments adoption in this country. For more information, please visit FasterPaymentsCouncil.org.

Notice to readers: These are archived articles. Contact information, links and other details may be out of date. We regret any inconvenience.

Source: Company press release.

Categories: Announcement